Biology and Philosophy V. Intermission. Goethe as an Appetizer

Juan S. Gómez-Jeria

I comment on my proposition that certain parts of Faust I relate fragments of Goethe’s internal search. First I comment about language as a tool for group exchange of information. Inner speech (thinking with words) is a new and a potent tool to develop an inner personal world whose wealth and complexity are related to the number of words that the individual handles. Some people expose part or all of their inner worlds through books, theater plays, speeches, etc. Internal and external languages serve to formulate what I consider a fundamental question: During my life have I done anything different from what a chimpanzee does? Goethe was a prolific writer but he had never before written about philosophy. Examining Faust I you find clear signs of internal dissatisfaction coupled with a lack of ability to climb to the higher echelons of the human mode. This failure is confessed when Faust makes an arrangement with Mephistopheles and seduces a teenage girl. Faust returns to one of the main biological impulses, and a strong one: sex. Faust/Goethe is totally dominated by the soul that grips the earth with all its senses, as he says. No philosophy is possible now.

https://doi.org/10.31871/WJRR.8.3.24